The pain came through the sealed channel, not through any wound.
It filled the address without breaking a vessel. His stance held while the list emptied into the rib, and nothing on his skin changed to name the source.
The flood did not drop him, but it locked forward motion behind a sum his body kept trying to survive. Every step toward Sorn cost a reading meant for nine hundred people.
The address that valued nothing now carried all of them.
Sorn stood on the far side of the desk with the registry open between them. She had built the trap to look like paperwork, and paperwork was the one weapon his fists could not answer.
"Nine hundred patients pouring into one channel, and not one lost a wound to do it," Nox said, holding his footing at the desk.
"You did not move the injuries," he added, jaw set. "You moved the hurt, so the ledger still shows every patient as sick as they were."
